Mobile review round-up: 'Borderlands Legends', 'Arc Squadron', more

Each week, Digital Spy rounds up the biggest mobile gaming releases with reviews and trailers. This week's games take players to a new spin on the Borderlands series, a space combat game that soars to new heights, a fist-filled action game and the Wreck-It Ralph game based on a movie which was originally adapted from games.

While the main Borderlands games combine role-playing elements with first-person shooting, the iOS spin-off Borderlands Legends swaps perspectives to an overhead tactical view. Players control all four characters from the original game at once, with Brick, Mordecai, Lilith and Roland each featuring unique skills consistent with their roles. They're controlled simultaneously by tapping and dragging to give each one very basic directions as they automatically fire at enemies within range, or target a specific enemy if you tell them to.

A cover system is in place, with plentiful chest-high walls to hide behind, but they end up getting in the way most of the time as characters seem to have difficulty navigating around cover on their own. The auto-aim also doesn't work as often as it should, forcing you to micromanage far more than the game seems to be tailored for. The result is in one or two characters usually left ignored as you try and fail to juggle all four at once.

The game is broken down into randomly generated missions that usually amount to killing every enemy in sight. Enemies earn experience to level up your characters and drop money to buy new weapons at vending machines between missions. Each character has a single skill tree for customization, but without any level cap you'll be able to fill every slot with skill points to spare. Buying weapons is also a bit of a disappointment given how much fun finding random loot is in past Borderlands titles.

While there are plenty of missions to play, they all start to feel the same as enemies scale with your level and the same environments repeat time and again. With a more focused campaign and some extra work to iron out control bugs, and Borderlands Legends could have shown promise. But some very pretty scenery can't make up for the inconsistent controls and repetitive missions.

Fans of classic space shooters like Star Fox take note, Arc Squadron is the game you've been waiting for. You pilot your ship through a wide range of missions using intuitive and effective one-touch controls. Simply hold your finger and drag to move your ship, which will automatically fire when an enemy is in your cross-hairs. Moving your finger quickly or making a swipe motion causes the ship to barrel roll, giving you a quick dodge against enemy fire and some of the more twisting levels.

The levels themselves are fantastic, with varied locales and carefully designed enemy patterns. There are 27 main missions, along with 9 fantastic boss battles and 27 warp missions that act as skill challenges for target practice, manoeuvring and collecting power-ups. Successfully completing missions earns credits, which can be used to upgrade or unlock new ships and secondary weapons. The new ships and weapons really change how the game plays, and you'll find yourself going back to previous mission multiple times to try various combinations for fun. In many ways Arc Squadron is a better sequel to Star Fox 64 than the official games that followed it, making it a must-have for mobile space combat fans.

Punch Quest takes players on a fisticuff-flying run through dangerous dungeons and caverns. The goal is to punch your way through skeletons, orcs and flying imps for a high score. It appears simple at first, as your character automatically runs you can tap the right side of the screen to punch and left side to uppercut. The uppercut has a secondary role though, as it lifts you off the ground allowing it to also act as a jump button. You can also hold both sides of the screen to block, or perform various air combos for some surprising combat versatility in an iOS game.

While your main goal is to get a high score, at any time you will also have three missions to complete. The missions often revolve around special abilities, which can be gradually unlocked and grant more powerful attacks once you build up a high punching combo. There are also branching paths during your run, letting you quickly choose the next challenge. There's great variety in the branching paths, from treasure halls to boss battles and even riding a velociraptor that shoots lasers from its mouth.

The branching paths and constant unlocking of new special abilities never lets the action feel repetitive, keeping you coming back over and over for another run through the dungeon. It's also worth noting that it can be played in either portrait or landscape orientation, and somehow pulls it off so that it doesn't feel like any screen space is lost. Punch Quest is a wonderful fast action romp for iOS that will keep drawing players in for a long time to come.

Wreck-It Ralph is a collection of three games inspired by the Disney film. The first is Fix-It Felix Jr, which was previously released as a free iOS game. This version is a little bit easier than the free original with seemingly fewer obstacles and enemies to get in your way. It also has improved controls, using a virtual joystick rather than four widely spaced buttons.

The second game is Sweet Climber, a Doodle Jump clone with a candy theme. It's very basic as you move Ralph by tilting and try to collect candy for a high score. The third game is Hero's Duty, which takes the forms of a top-down twin-stick shooter. Like Sweet Climber, it is a very basic imitation of other, better iOS games, and isn't really worth the price of admission. The improved Fix-It Felix Jr. game is the star, and really the only reason to continue playing Wreck-It Ralph. That being said, the improvements aren't enough to make it worth a purchase over the free version that was already available, making Wreck-It Ralph a difficult game to recommend.